Don't forget: Vote in the "Greatest Americans" poll!

[FreedomAngel82]

It's the top twenty-five this week so you gotta vote!

http://www.aol.com/GreatestAmericans

I had a hard time figuring it out and accidently got a vote in for Reagan. ARGH!!! You only have three votes. The other two went to JFK and Clinton. I wanted to make my third one for Mrs. Roosevelt but used it up on Reagan because it was weird. The next part of the series will be more indepth biographies on the canidates and then another round of voting. It'll be on next Sunday night at 8pm eastern on the Discovery channel.

[Sherwood]

1. Some of those people

Does it make anyone else sick that Oprah is on that list? And Tom Cruise?

[dhinojosa]

2. Tom Cruise?

What list are you looking at?

[SimpleMan]

4. Tom Cruise...?

I didn't see him there.

[Seabiscuit]

20. Cruise is in the top 100, one step ahead of Tom Hanks.

Ahead of Tom Hanks??????? :wtf:

[booksenkatz]

54. Not a single entertainer should be on the list at all

I was in showbiz for 20 years. Entertainment does not feed a single hungry person or free a single slave. Inspirational? Sometimes. But it's hard to be inspired when you're hungry or homeless or have no civil rights, etc. Entertainment should be waaaaaay down on the list of priorities, as sports should be. It cracks me up how we idolize entertainers (and athletes) in this country! It's the most self-serving job you could ever have, I am frankly ashamed of wasting 20 years of my life in that industry, even though I was pretty successful in it. Whenever I questioned it, people would say, "Oh, but you inspire people, you move people, you make them think, you make them laugh, you make them forget their troubles." Yeah, right. For 2 hours... then they go home to their miserable lives and I haven't really changed a single damn thing at all. Play-pretend and make-believe is no way to spend your time on earth, and I'm thrilled to be back in the land of Real, where I can truly make a difference.

/rant

[Warpy]

10. and Oprah is the ONLY WOMAN?

Sick doesn't begin to describe it!

[Seabiscuit]

19. No, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks made top 25.

Ooprah was thrown in for laughs.

And Lucille Ball, Madonna, Jackie Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and (choke) Barbara Bush made the top 100.

[Flying Dream Blues]

31. What??? No LAURA? And she's going to be our next President! n/t

[acmejack]

34. Darkly indeed!

nt

[Seabiscuit]

3. WTF are Bob Hope, Oprah Winfrey, Ronny Rayguns and Dubya doing

on that list????

I was about to go straight to JFK until (1) I noticed some of my historical heros (Edison, Jefferson, Einstein, etc., etc.) which made it hard until (2) it became easy when I found the truly greatest American of all ages: WALT DISNEY!

[Psephos]

5. Well, he definitely is up there. :-)

[Carla in Ca]

16. Seabiscuit, with all due respect

Watch a bio of Bob Hope if you get the chance. He made a lot of people laugh on his radio shows and some silly movies. And he spent many years traveling the world to entertain our troops and let them know how much we appreciated them. He was a remarkable man.

[Seabiscuit]

21. I agree, but IMHO, NO entertainer should be considered one of the 25

"Greatest Americans". Period. That aside, the only thing I ever had against Hope was that he was a Republican, a Nixon supporter, and gung-ho about the Vietnam War. For which I can never forgive him.

[Carla in Ca]

51. Fair enough

I respect your opinion:hi:

[Reverend_Smitty]

6. The fact that Dr. Phil (90)

ranked higher than RFK (97) just proves to me that this whole list is bullshit! So the voting American public can kiss my ass!

[Seabiscuit]

7. I voted for Walt Disney. Should I kiss your ass too?

[Reverend_Smitty]

8. No

Walt Disney is an icon...Dr. Phil...not so much

[Seabiscuit]

9. Thanks. Dr. Phil can kiss your ass. So can Oprah.

[Reverend_Smitty]

11. yes...

so can Condi Rice and anyone else involved in this administration that was included on the list

[FreedomAngel82]

12. No way on Phil

I can't stand him. He's a smartalech and that's it. He thinks he's hot stuff but I used to watch his show and now I look back on it it was really ridiculous. Check out these video's. It'll show a reason why I'm not fond of Dr. Phil anymore.

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/killphilvol1.html

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/killphil2.html (this is just silly too. I love his impersonations of Kerry though. Even though I admire Kerry you gotta admit it's hilarious).

[Ron Green]

13. I voted for the same person 3 times. This is a really meaningful event.

:sarcasm:

[FreedomAngel82]

14. LOL

I know. The whole voting process is confusing. I thought I was clicking on Kennedy but clicked on Reagan. :mad: They should have it to where you can click on the circle and it points what you want and then click send. This way was so confusing.

[Carla in Ca]

17. Wow! Sounds like our last election, doesn't it?

n/t

[smartvoter]

15. LOL. Same here. nt

[Seabiscuit]

18. Just like American Idol.

AOL sponsored this idiocy. Could it just be that they got their inspiration from Fox?

Hell, over 50 of the top 100 people on that list had absolutely no business being listed. And no one got to vote for it. They were hand-picked by some a-hole/s at AOL.

[muriel_volestrangler]

52. Inspiration from the BBC

Who did "Great Britons" about 3 years ago; several other countries have followed suit.

Don't knock it - it can actually turn out to be a good exercise. Britain named the top 100 (and there were a few silly nominees in there, like Michael Crawford, who must have had a fan club vote), and then cut it down to the top 10, and did a programme on each. That's where it can get good - each was co-written, and presented, by someone famous (politicians, broadcasters) and the general standard of them was excellent - interesting, informative, and entertaining. Then they had a studio debate with all the presenters.

Looking at this press release, it looks as if Discovery is doing it on the cheap - just one programme with a debate between the celebrity advocates (maybe they'll get to do a short film each, but it was the chance for things like a full hour biography of Charles Darwin that was more interesting in Britain). But that does say the top 100 were voted for by the public too. I can't see any other way so many current politicians would have got in, either. With all due respect to Barack Obama, he hasn't become great yet.

[dbt]

22. How the FUCK did bu$hler make the Top 25?

I need to see that audit trail!

[MoJoWorkin]

27. Bushie will get it, or Ragun

Do you smell rigging in the air? We lefties have several more to chose from---real greats--FDR,JFK,MLK, etc., whereas, the RW nut jobs only have the above, so more of their votes will be split into only two columns. I think it WILL be Bush, as it is another way to prop up the "loser" (Reid had it right the first time--loser AND liar)

[shadowknows69]

23. I can't do it

Not even to skew the results. I can't take part in anything obscene enough to include that mudering bastard bush in the top 25 of anything except top 25 supervillians. GW, The Joker and Dr. Doom are in a 3 way tie right now.

[Tesla]

24. Hello, Tesla!!!!

You wouldn't have your puters if it wasn't for Nikola!!!!

[dbt]

25. Right ON!

THERE was a genius.

[sellitman]

26. Ben Franklin hands down!

:thumbsup:

[ooglymoogly]

46. for me it was between ben and fdr

since the freepers are all going for the dumbest person in the pol. i went with fdr 3 votes to counter. fdr was responsible for the great society, bringing this country out of the great depression and wining the war against the nazis. if this was some kind of meaningful pol lincoln, washington, jefferson, mlk and ben franklin would have been in the running but this is war.

[LiberallyInclined]

28. they need a better coder for their voting site-

when the cursor is on one persons face, it highlights the person below...did anyone else have this problem? thank god that i accidentally voted for muhammed ali than ronnie raygun.
my actual votes would all be for benjamin franklin.

[Califooyah Operative]

29. yea, it was like that for me, the initial post in this thread also

reported the misvote for raegan.


I had to strategically maneveur the thing to get my votes in for fdr and eleanor roosevelt.

[GiovanniC]

37. Jefferson, Franklin, Roosevelt

[Helga Scow Stern]

30. Did anyone hear what someone said about a president lying?

I just saw it for a second before someone changed the channel.

Who said it? Was it Schwarzkopf? They were talking about Nixon.

This person said (paraphrase), "The fact that he lied to the American people cancels out whatever else he did."

[in_cog_ni_to]

32. Done!

Eleanor Roosevelt, Clinton and JFK.

I can't wait to see who the top 5 are. We should make SURE Clinton is there AND the number ONE Greatest American at the end of the voting procedure...just to PISS OFF the repukes! :evilgrin: They would be foaming at the mouth for weeks over that one.

[Dawgs]

33. Where's Ann Coulter?

Shit, they put Bush up there.

[tk2kewl]

35. My vote: MLK

[Snotcicles]

36. I almost voted for Aunt B but then realized it was Eleanor n/t

[Deep13]

38. Won't let me vote for F. Douglass or John Glenn!

Also, how come slave-owning, never did an honest day's work in his life Jefferson is on the list but not a self-made man like John Adams? Adams, plowed his own fields, put himself through Harvard and never did business with slave labor.

[d_b]

39. Went with MLK Jr.

[NoSheep]

40. Um...was Einstein American? Not born here (Ulm?)

[Deep13]

42. He was naturalized.

There is a famous photo of him taking his citizenship oath without any socks.

[NoSheep]

44. Thanks

[SteveIrving1]

41. FDR

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal, Social Security (that all 16 republicans in the senate at the time voted against), WW2, and it took an act of God get him out of office.

[Arugula Latte]

43. Yep. He was a great one. A giant.

Bush isn't good enough to be the cockroach smushed on the bottom of FDR's shoe.

[redqueen]

45. Roosevelt, Jefferson, Edison

[Patiod]

47. FDR, Lincoln, Franklin

[UdoKier]

48. FDR, JFK and MLK.

I really wanted to vote for Cesar Chavez but I guess I missed the first round...

[minerva50]

49. Slightly off-topic

My mom was at a designers' showplace home tour in Maryland last week. They had a book of American presidents on the kid's study desk, open to - you guessed it - Reagan. She waited for the other ladies to move on and changed the page back to Franklin Roosevelt. It made her feel slightly better about the obnoxious mini-mansion that had been built on the site of the lovely waterfront cottage she was living in (renting) when I was a baby.

[ComerPerro]

50. Your vote won't matter one bit

FReepers will vote in lockstep for Reagan and Bush. The only deviation will be on the third person. Maybe Limbaugh?

[booksenkatz]

53. I put all 3 of mine on Thomas Edison

I'm a sucker for creative genius, I guess. Next week I'll spread the love to FDR. Regardless of anything else you want to say about them, those 2 men did so much to improve the quality of life for pissants like me, and I'm very grateful to them.

edited to clarify

[alarimer]

55. Why in the hell was this DRECK on Discovery Channel?

I swear that station has really gone downhill. A totally bullshit popularity poll. Most of the people voting have no eathly idea of the contributions of people like Franklin, Jefferson, etc.